federal
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
About a league or treaty.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
fehderuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfɛdɚəl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Pertaining to the national government level in a federal nation, as opposed to state, provincial, county, city, or town.
Pertaining to a league or treaty; derived from an agreement or covenant between parties, especially between nations.
noun
A supporter of federation.
A member of a Federal Party
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Pertaining to the national government level in a federal nation, as opposed to state, provincial, county, city, or town.
Used this way, federal is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in government or politics contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Government/politics
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use federal
- “A federal system like that of the United States.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
An organization formed by merging several groups or parties.
By federal government.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An excess of the federal government's spending over its revenue.
Ethiopia is a republic in northeastern Africa on the Red Sea.
A department of the federal government of the United States.
A federally sponsored corporation that insures accounts in national banks and other qualified institutions.
A district set apart as the seat of government of a federation.
An independent agency of the United States government that provides a single point of accountability for all federal emergency preparedness and mitigation and response activities.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
The idea of a federal organization of more or less self-governing units.
A member of a former political party in the United States that favored a strong centralized federal government.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- courthousenoun
- electoraladjective
- fccnoun
- electionnoun
- statutenoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.